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Mutant TA02 F150

Had this body around forever. I had a '92 F150 myself and had planned a replica, but sold the truck a while ago and this has been sitting on the shelf since. Finally decided to do something about it!. Decided to go a different route than the standard TA chassis, but keep some of the TA flavor.

Hacked up the front gearbox. Going 2wd, so cut off the molded in gear stuff and added a piece of flat styrene to cover it up. Filled in the mount holes for extra strength too.

Covered it up and redrilled the original mount holes. I'll fill in the axle holes too later - totally forgot about them.

New 2mm 6061 chassis base:

Fabbed some new standoffs and used the stock steering parts. Drilled out the holes in the bellcranks and press fit some 5/16 brass tubing which fits perfectly over the perennial Tamiya brass bushings. Less slop than the stock set up when it's all said and done. Eventually will fab up a real tie rod ilo the z-link wire. I've done the 5/16 mod on most of my TA's now, and this works so well, plan to use it on some other upcoming builds.

Robbed a CC01 axle from the pile-o-parts as it fits the body width perfectly and fabbed up an upper link mount for a 4-link. Was not sure if it is going to put too much stress on the axle case or not -time will tell. Feels pretty solid though. If it fails, I'll redesign with a few more mount points. Was going for the light minimalist set-up here.

Put it all together with some side plates. One of my beefs with the stock TA kit is the front wheels stick out just a bit and rub the body badly under full compression, so you have to jack the body up quite a bit or trim it out. Love the flares on the front, so they are totally staying. Experimenting with different combos, I found that using Hummer arms and TA01 style knuckles narrowed it a bit and gave me a pretty much perfect fit under the body. Tucks very nicely, and no interference. Found a set of aluminium knuckles in my parts box - even better!

Plan is a 1/16 trans with the brushed 380 motor for now. Small, compact, and a BL set-up is a drop-in if needed. Could have easily shoehorned a 540 in there, but I think the 380 set-up with a lot less torque will be a lot more tractable (especially with just 2wd) and plenty of power. Just have to keep the weight to a minimum.

More to come, had to order some standoffs and a small battery which is getting mounted over the rear axle for better weight distribution - thanks for looking!

Radio and battery tray. Didn't need to be structural, so some 1.5 mm black styrene worked fine. Heated it up, bent it to fit and zip tied it to the chassis standoffs, and mounted a think piece of rubber to it to keep the battery sliding around. Worked like a champ during the test drive.

With the electrics...ran out of black zip ties though, pardon the red.

Fabbed up some rear body mounts and dropped the body on. The body mounts f/r are the same spacing as the stock Tamiya kit, so any Tamiya body will drop on w/o mods or additional holes.

Full tuck and dropout:

Couple of details to finish, and it's painting time for the body. Should have it painted this weekend. Test drive went ok, the suspension is way, way off. Drove just like a grasshopper - rear end was bouncing all over the place - basically had no suspension, and the rear end had no traction at all. Swapping the springs front to rear and going to a 3 hole piston with 25wt to help get it planted. With the body off, it was pretty peppy with the 380, surprised at how much get up and go it had. Not far off from a stock 540 silvercan.